Vikki Campion: Digital activists allowed to destroy the local town hall meeting

Business and government would prefer to take feedback from the bowels of the internet rather than respond to real people and their concerns in face-to-face meetings, writes Vikki Campion.

Beware, you are being catfished out of democracy.

We may well shake our heads at older women who have been convinced they are dating celebrities such as Post Malone, even though “Post” bizarrely requires money to be sent to him regularly.

But we are also being scammed by our governments. They are allowing an army of catfishers and sock puppets to pretend to be concerned citizens and influence decision-making and consultation.

Catfishing is using a false online persona to defraud, scam or cyberbully. It is abhorrent.

Sock puppeting is when one person creates multiple online personas to influence polls and ratings. It is revolting.

But governments are allowing catfishers and sock puppets to steal the traditional town meeting from us.

It is another horror in an online world where blue ticks, followers, fake reviews and false likes can be easily bought.

For instance, just days before Christmas, the Medical Board of Australia decided to get some “evidence” to back up its plan to slash Telehealth services.

It wanted online comments to its statement that Telehealth “should not be considered as a substitute for face-to-face consultations”.

But feedback from whom? You just fill out an online form on its website. And real, concerned citizens are unlikely to know this is even happening, after the equivalent of advertising it on the back of a matchbox.

After two weeks of this, where the sock puppets can go to town, the Medical Board can then lobby the federal Government and potentially get changes made that will affect our health and wellbeing.

Perhaps its preferred alternative is that we get no doctor at all, as regional GP clinics are shut down by corporate capital city operators. Would we all be healthier if doctors who had delivered some 130 million services over Zoom never logged on?

This trend of only taking feedback from the bowels of the internet allows those individuals who are well-versed in spending idle hours at the keyboard – anywhere in the world – to steal the traditional town meeting from concerned locals.

Where once a council would advise of development applications in the local paper and on a post office noticeboard next to phone numbers of local ironing and lawn mowing businesses, now locals are not even told.

Instead, thanks to one person having a series of fake accounts, the sock puppets can manipulate public opinion by the illusion of a multiplicity that is really just one.

Get Up! was an early acolyte of these tricks.

Every controversial development application to do with anything from energy generation to a rail trail risks being flooded with submissions from these sock-puppet accounts.

NSWs biggest wind farm, which is to be developed by worldwide giant Vestas, was swamped with support from as close as Hamilton, Ontario, on the other side of the globe.

The very same army of fake accounts that railed against coal now scream in support of wind towers – the only commonality is they don’t live in the area.

Instead, it’s probably just a couple of Canadian wannabe Greta Thunbergs hiding behind a keyboard, furiously working their sock puppet accounts.

Everyone has the right to their opinion and the right to voice it.

That does not translate into the right to be local by proxy, skewing developments and changing the lives of others with no consequence to their own.

They are pretending to be someone they are not and governments are letting them do it.

And while your new online boyfriend “Post Malone” turns out to be more interested in your money than you love, these online fakers are not motivated by love for Walcha, they just want money to continue their grand global wind farm jihad.

In the Winterbourne Wind at Walcha case, 75 per cent of locals objected with specific concerns, such as the $64 million offsets the developer Vestas will pay to destroy habitat near the World Heritage and Oxley Wild Rivers National Park.

Yet more than 80 per cent of foreigners supported it.

Take this effort from Name Withheld, of White Hills Victoria: “In the famous words of The Simpsons’ Helen Lovejoy – ‘Oh, won’t somebody please think of the children!’ I support this project for current and future generations.”

Were they really from Victoria? Or another country? Perhaps we should be grateful they didn’t pretend to be Post Malone.

They certainly didn’t turn up to the town meeting at the local bowlo.

Does it matter whether those supporting submissions live locally or if they are even real people?

It’s not consultation, it’s manipulation by a handful of people with idle time, no accountability, a stable of sock puppets and a 5G connection.

Today’s consultation process on the internet is just a “tick-a-box” exercise that cannot be trusted.

But when building a multimillion- dollar industrial wind tower development, it is the preferred method of engagement if you want to avoid the grief of actually talking to locals.

Don’t send money to people you meet online if they profess their love but don’t turn up for coffee.

And don’t believe online polls unless they come with a real name and address – or can turn up at the local bowling club and shake your hand.